The World According to Bertie (44 Scotland Street Series #4)

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More About This Book

Overview

The latest completely charming installment in the bestselling 44 Scotland Street series.

There is never a quiet moment on 44 Scotland Street. In The World According to Bertie, Pat deals with the reappearance of Bruce, which has her heart skipping—and not in a pleasant way. Angus Lordie's dog Cyril has been taken away by the authorities, accused of being a serial biter. Unexpectedly, Domenica has offered to help free him. As usual, Big Lou is still looking for love, and handing out coffee and advice to the always contemplative Matthew. And Bertie, the beleaguered Italian-speaking six year old prodigy, now has a little brother, Ulysses, who Bertie hopes will help distract his pushy mother Irene.

Beautifully observed, cleverly detailed, The World According to Bertie is classic McCall Smith and a treat for his avid fans as well as his first time readers.

Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble
Once again confounding expectations, Alexander McCall Smith has written a mystery novel unlike any other. Inspired by a chance encounter with Tales of the City novelist Armistead Maupin, the author of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency decided to write a novel under the pressure of daily serialization. Originally published in 110 installments in The Scotsman, 44 Scotland Street recounts the intersecting lives of inhabitants of a multiple-occupancy building in Edinburgh. At the center of the entertaining entanglement is Pat, a 20-year-old gallery employee who makes a startling discovery about a lost masterpiece.
Elsa Dixler
It is clear even to an outsider that someone who knows Edinburgh would recognize many people and places in ''44 Scotland Street.'' But an outsider can still relish McCall Smith's depiction of this place ''of angled streets and northern light,'' and enjoy his tolerant, good-humored company.
— The New York Times
More Reviews (1) Fewer Reviews
From The Critics

In this latest installment of McCall Smith’s 44 Scotland Street series, Robert Ian Mackenzie portrays Bertie as the overly intelligent and articulate six-year-old that he is meant to be, but when Bertie is among his classmates Tofu, Hiawatha, Larch and Olive, Mackenzie is hard-pressed to individualize the children’s voices. A similar problem arises as more and more women are added to the cast. Now that Domenica and Antonia are neighbors, their voices are almost as similar as their flats. Miss Harmony, Bertie’s teacher, could be Antonia’s twin sister. While Mackenzie has clearly run out of new voices, he does better with his male characters, especially with Angus’s basso and Matthew’s hesitant voice that matches his timid demeanor. Mackenzie keeps this enjoyable, lighthearted romp moving along quickly. An Anchor paperback (Reviews, June 30). (Nov.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780307387066
  • Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
  • Publication date: 11/11/2008
  • Pages: 368
  • Sales rank: 258,235
  • Series: 44 Scotland Street Series, #4
  • Product dimensions: 5.10 (w) x 7.90 (h) x 1.20 (d)

Meet the Author

Alexander McCall Smith
Alexander McCall Smith
Law professor Alexander McCall Smith had already written more than 50 books before inventing the heroine for his No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series: Precious Ramotswe, the only female P.I. in Botswana. The books are as unconventional as their good-humored heroine, who relies on common sense -- and a few tidbits gleaned from Agatha Christie -- to solve her cases.

Biography

Alexander McCall Smith was born in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) and went to school in Bulawayo, near the Botswana border. Although he moved to Scotland to attend college and eventually settled in Edinburgh, he always felt drawn to southern Africa and taught law for a while at the University of Botswana. He has written a book on the criminal law of Botswana, and among his successful children's books is a collection of African folk tales, Children of Wax.

Eventually, Smith had an urge to write a novel about a woman who would embody the qualities he admired in the people of Botswana, and the result, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, was a surprise hit, receiving two special Booker citations and a place on the Times Literary Supplement's International Books of the Year and the Millennium list. "The author's prose has the merits of simplicity, euphony and precision," Anthony Daniels wrote in the Sunday Telegraph. "His descriptions leave one as if standing in the Botswanan landscape. This is art that conceals art. I haven't read anything with such unalloyed pleasure for a long time."

Despite the book's success in the U.K., American publishers were slow to take an interest, and by the time The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency was picked up by Pantheon Books, Smith had already written two sequels. The books went from underground hits to national phenomena in the United States, spawning fan clubs and inspiring celebratory reviews. Smith is also the author of a detective series featuring the insatiably curious philosopher Isabel Dalhousie and the 44 Scotland Street novels, which present a witty portrait of Edinburgh society

In an interview on the publisher's web site, Smith says he thinks the country of Botswana "particularly chimes with many of the values which Americans feel very strongly about -- respect for the rule of law and for individual freedom. I hope that readers will also see in these portrayals of Botswana some of the great traditional virtues in Africa -- in particular, courtesy and a striking natural dignity."

Good To Know

As a professor at Edinburgh Law School, Smith specializes in criminal law and medical law, and has written about the legal and ethical aspects of euthanasia, medical research, and medical practice.

When he isn't writing books or teaching, Smith finds time to play the bassoon in the candidly named amateur ensemble he co-founded, The Really Terrible Orchestra.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1.

In Hanover Street. Watch Out, Pat, Bruce Is Back . . . Or Is He?

Pat saw Bruce at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning, or at least that is when she thought she saw him. An element of doubt there certainly was. This centred not on the time of the sighting, but on the identity of the person sighted; for this was one of those occasions when one wonders whether the eye, or even the memory, has played a trick. And such tricks can be extraordinary, as when one is convinced that one has seen the late General de Gaulle coming out of a cinema, or when, against all reasonable probability, one thinks one has spotted Luciano Pavarotti on a train between Glasgow and Paisley; risible events, of course, but ones which underline the proposition that one’s eyes are not always to be believed.

She saw Bruce while she was travelling on a bus from one side of Edinburgh – the South Side, where she now lived – to the New Town, on the north side of the city, where she worked three days a week in the gallery owned by her boyfriend, Matthew. The bus had descended with lumbering stateliness down the Mound, past the National Gallery of Scotland, and had turned into Hanover Street, narrowly missing an insouciant pedestrian at the corner. Pat had seen the near-miss – it was by the merest whisker, she thought – and had winced, but it was just at that moment, as the bus laboured up Hanover Street towards the statue of George IV, that she saw a young man walking in the opposite direction, a tall figure with Bruce’s characteristic en brosse hairstyle and wearing precisely the sort of clothes that Bruce liked to wear on a Saturday: a rugby jersey celebrating Scotland’s increasingly ancient Triple Crown victory and a pair of stone-coloured trousers.

Her eye being caught by the rugby jersey and the stone-coloured trousers, she turned her head sharply. Bruce! But now she could see only the back of his head, and after a moment she could not see even that; Bruce, or his double, had merged into a knot of people standing on the corner of Princes Street and Pat lost sight of him. She looked ahead. The bus would stop in a few yards; she could disembark and make her way down to Princes Street to see if it really was him. But then she reminded herself that if she did that she would arrive late at the gallery, and Matthew needed her to be there on time; he had stressed that. He had an appointment, he said, with a client who was proposing to place several important Colourist pictures on the market. She did not want to hold him up, and quite apart from that there was the question of whether she would want to see Bruce, even if it proved to be him. She thought on balance that she did not.

Bruce had been her flatmate when she had first moved into 44 Scotland Street. At first, she had been rather in awe of  him – after all, he was so confident in his manner, so self-assured – and she at the time had been so much more diffident. Then things had changed. Bruce was undoubtedly good-looking – a fact of which he was fully aware and of which he was very willing to take advantage; he knew very well that women found him attractive, and he assumed that Pat would prove no exception. Unfortunately, it transpired that he was right, and Pat found herself drawn to Bruce in a way which she did not altogether like. All this could have become very messy, but at the last moment, before her longing had been translated into anything beyond mere looking, she had come to her senses and decided that Bruce was an impossible narcissist. She fought to free herself of his spell, and she did. And then, having lost his job at the firm of surveyors (after being seen enjoying an intimate lunch in the Café St Honoré with the wife of the firm’s senior partner), Bruce decided that Edinburgh was too small for him and had moved to London. People who do that often then discover that London is too big for them, much to the amusement of those who stayed behind in Edinburgh in the belief that it was just the right size. This sometimes leads to the comment that the only sensible reason for leaving Scotland for London was to take up the job of prime minister, a remark that might have been made by Samuel Johnson, had he not been so prejudiced on this particular matter and thought quite the opposite.

Pat had been relieved that Bruce had gone to London, and it had not occurred to her that he might return. It did not matter much to her, of course, as she moved in different circles from those frequented by Bruce, and she would not have to mix with him even if he did return. But at the same time she felt slightly unsettled by the possible sighting, especially as the experience made her feel an indefinable excitement, an increase in heart rate, that was not altogether welcome. Was it just the feeling one gets on meeting with an old lover, years afterwards? Try as one might to treat such occasions as ordinary events, there is a thrill which marks them out from the quotidian. And that is what Pat felt now.

She completed the rest of the bus journey down to Dundas Street in a thoughtful state. She imagined what she might say if she were to meet him and what he in turn might say to her. Would he have been improved by living in London, or would he have become even worse? It was difficult to tell. There must be those for whom living in London is an enriching experience, and there must be those who are quite unchanged by it. Pat had a feeling that Bruce would not have learned anything, as he had never shown any signs of learning anything when he was in Edinburgh. He would just be Bruce.

She got off her bus a few steps from Matthew’s gallery. Through the window, she saw Matthew at his desk, immersed in paperwork. She looked at him fondly from a distance: dear Matthew, she thought; dear Matthew, in your distressed-oatmeal sweater, so ordinary, so safe; fond thoughts, certainly, but unaccompanied by any quickening of the pulse.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted June 21, 2011

    Wow. I canr believe nook releas this

    Shiieeeettt!

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  • Anonymous

    Posted September 19, 2009

    Alexander McCall Smith has done it again!

    Delightful continuation of the 44 Scotland Street series with skillfully woven wit. Totally enjoyable.

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  • Posted June 20, 2009

    more from this reviewer

    Alexander McCall Smith is a delightful author!

    Smith's characters are charming and his light-hearted style and superb wit leave one smiling long after the book is put away. I have ordered the first book of the 44 Scotland street series in compact disc for my sister because you just have to hear Bertie play the saxophone.
    I have read or listened to all of Smith's books. They are great and an ideal gift for anyone on your list.

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  • Posted April 7, 2009

    Disappointed

    I was really looking forward to Bertie and his dad forming a closer relationship and a sort of united front against Irene's ridiculous views on child rearing but Bertie's room is pink again, Olive has come over to play and, except for the fact that a fluke prevented Irene from accompanying Bertie to Paris and ruining it for him, Irene is running the show again and has some rather disturbing ideas (having him help her pump breast milk???). The middle of the book really drags and I kept wondering when it would get back to Bertie and when we'd really get a view of the world according to that over-scheduled and downhearted little boy as he counts the years until he's 18 and free.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 23, 2009

    If only there were more in this series!

    I adored this series and although 6-year old Bertie is my favorite character I became very attached to all of them! I wish McCall would revisit this series and write a couple more!

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 16, 2009

    Not my favorite book in this series.

    I am a big fan of Mr McCall Smith and am reading three of his series. I particularly like the 44 Scotland Street series but was disappointed in this latest book. It seemed to drag rather to be quirky, and there really wasn't enough of Bertie. It was not fulfilling as the other books have been.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted February 9, 2009

    I Also Recommend:

    The World According to Bertie

    Alexander McCall Smith ranks at the top level of my favorites list. He describes his characters and situations so beautifully that I can "see" the story as well as a movie or TV show. And, to add another wonderful element--I could actually give one of his books to my grandkids to read, without concern about profanity or vulgarity. His books--and I have enjoyed each one that I have read--are entertaining, well written and upbeat. A nice combination in the complicated world of today. The Scotland Street series--this is #3, follows the adventures of the residents of one street in Scotland, through adventures, romances and just general events of living. Bertie is my favorite character--a precocious little boy with a domineering mother. All Bertie wishes is to be a normal little boy!

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